Whispers of the past
by LordS1llyN1pples
Summary: Did you ever wonder what Mobius was like before the likes of Mobians ever came about? Well Sonic and some friends are going to soon find out first hand. Rated M for maturity, violence, profanity and I expect there will be lemons later on but tasteful ones, not just there for the sake of it. Story on hold for a bit. Unexpected thing has come up in real life. - Sorry but DISCONTINUED
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Of all the places to be caught, downtown Robotropolis had to be the worst place next to the robot programming barracks. Sonic, the fastest living creature alive was in a fix and he knew it. Sweat dripped down his face as the realisation slowly sunk in that pure speed was not enough to help him this time. Sure, he could run faster than the speed of sound itself, like a bullet zip lining through a wind tunnel to its target, but Sonic knew he could not dodge the computer guided laser targeting of Robotnik's elite Swatbot units in such confined quarters. If it were open space with plenty of room to manoeuvre then maybe it would have been possible.

Sonic was trapped in a narrow alleyway which had been recently altered by Robotnik's ever-present robot forces. They had erected a tall barricade made of steel and coated with a shiny metallic coat that gave the effect of being impossible to climb – or rather run up as was Sonic's favourite party trick when giving Robotnik's elite Swatbot units the run-around.

Sonic tapped his foot impatiently and whistled to himself as a force of no more than 7 Swatbots closed in on him. So long as he didn't move, they would not fire their deadly arm mounted lasers on him. Oh no, Robotnik wanted Sonic alive to make an example of him.  
'Any minute now would be great Sal…' Sonic casually said to the lead robot advancing on him with outstretched metal hands.  
Hopping backwards two paces Sonic put some more distance between him and the Swatbots before he bumped into the wall.

Then a loud explosion and the sounds of twisted metal filled the air like a thunder clap and Sonic crouched over and held his mouth open to stop his eardrums from bursting. The air filled with a pulsing white light that flickered out of existence as fast as it came into being. After a minute of waiting to be sure there would not be a second explosion, Sonic rose to his feet.

Standing there on a light hovercraft built for 3 was his princess, Sally and standing up in his seat was the flamboyant figure of Antoine. Sally flashed her hazelnut eyes in Sonics direction for only a second before switching her attention back towards the controls. Sonic breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed as his mind filled with an icy cold sensation as he ran towards the hovercraft and accelerated fast but staying below the speed of sound. He did not want to cause a sonic boom and destabilise the craft. It took him a mere second to reach the craft but to him it felt more like 3 as time dilated around his physical form due to his speed and enhanced motor neurone abilities.

He dashed past the mangled and broken forms of the once hulking Swatbots and jumped in the air, passed his beautiful princess Sally and landed coolly in the crafts rear seat. It took a moment for Sally to realise he was in the craft before powering up the artificial anti-gravity enhancer and pushing the throttle down full power southwards to escape the undoubtedly huge response such an explosion would generate from being so close to the cities Swatbot barracks.

Antoine huffed in annoyance at Sonic and set his two-handed pulse launcher down between his knees and brushed back a lock of golden hair from his face and subconsciously checked his guards uniform for creases. Antoine is a rather flamboyant citizen of the planet Mobius and most people generally dislike his cowardly attitude and evident distaste at those he deems below him. A bit of a narcissist and foolish at times, he was quite handy with a firearm though with a natural talent developed through years of training with the Kings old guard.

Sonic sat back into the hovercrafts rather uncomfortable metal seats and felt the flood of cool liquid in his mind quickly dissipate and flood with heat instead. The hovercraft had been designed with worker robots in mind so comfort was not a top priority when being designed as worker robots were disposable. Still, it gave Sonic and Sally a grim satisfaction knowing that Robotnik himself had designed this and they had procured it from one of his many factories long ago.

'Did you get the data chips Sonic?' Sally immediately begun quizzing Sonic with her somewhat warm, cheerful voice  
'Give a guy a minute to relax Sal, I was almost blasted back there looking for your data chips after all…and no I did not find all of them but I found two of them only leaving one more for us to track down' Sonic yawned and passed his two data chips forwards to Sally who held them tight with one hand whilst guiding the hovercraft over the south eastern badlands where the rocky hills and gorges would frustrate attempts to locate them by radar.  
'No, these will have to do for now, it is too risky for us to try raiding Robotropolis anytime soon with Robotnik now alerted to what we are looking for. These will have to do.' Sally shook her head and ducked the craft low beyond a rocky outcrop and made a turn south for the great forest.  
'Ahem?'  
'Oh, yes, thanks Sonic' Sally responded to Sonics unspoken question and smiled to herself, a smile that went unnoticed by Sonic.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The hovercrafts engines hummed lightly in the gentle breeze, barely audible over the swishing sound of the wind blowing through the trees of the Great Forest. The Great Forest had stood for several millennia on Mobius, Mobotropolis had been built just north of it beyond the bad-lands.  
The Great Forest consisted mostly of tall oak trees stretching up hundreds of feet in some cases into the sky. Robotnik would not dare have his robots follow them there. He was yet to improve radar and sonar technology to avoid interference from the trees and wildlife. The effect of sending a regular Swatbot into the Great Forest was that it became disoriented from the constant movement of the forest and its inhabitant so it would simply shut down.

Sally eased up on the throttle and took the time to carefully swerve between the densely populated woodlands. It took great skill and concentration to navigate through the Great Forest on a hovercraft. There was nothing that would follow them into the Great Forest so Sally could afford to slow down and take her time.  
Sonic immediately felt beads of sweat line his forehead and he brushed a gloved hand over his face as the humidity of the forest clung to his skin and fur. The forest acted like a giant greenhouse in most parts where tree top cover was dense.  
They were heading towards their secret base, Knothole which did not have as much tree cover so the humidity was much less there. They needed low humidity so the computers Sally and her friend Rotor used would not develop a short circuit. A short circuit was a nightmare to fix due to how hard it was to get computer parts now. You could not just walk down to the local computer parts shop anymore, the Swatbots refused to serve you and tried to arrest you now so Rotor had taught himself how to fix their equipment and make the most of what parts they had.

Sonic glanced over to Antoine and noticed his fluffy hair had stuck fast to his forehead and his face was drenched with sweat. He sympathised with him for a minute as he could imagine how it must feel to have such long hair sticking to your face in this heat. But then Antoine gave Sonic that 'I'm better than you and I know it' look that pissed Sonic off so he turned back to look at the trees zipping past them now. Sally was going about 50 miles per hour now, pushing it for navigating the Great Forest but Sally had a lot of experience so Sonic gave it no further thought.

As they approached Knothole the trees thinned out and Sally checked her thermal scanner. As expected the screen in the dashboard showed everything as white because of the heat but the trick is that Swatbots or anything else robotic really heated up in this Forest and would show up very clearly on thermal even when everything else was cooking in its own right. Thermal was all clear so Sally ducked the hovercraft into a small clearing and gently touched down vertically.  
After touching down Antoine and Sonic hopped out of the craft and were relived to find that a nice breeze was blowing through the trees again and the humidity had dropped. Feeling refreshed and cooler Sonic and Antoine got behind the hovercraft and pushed it into the treeline out of sight from anything flying overhead. It was all basic routine by now.

Sally stretched out her arms and yawned. She could use a nice cool dip in the clear river before going to sleep and tackling those data chips. 'Maybe Rotor can take a look at the chips for me whilst I sleep' she said out loud to herself and knocked 4 times on an old tree stump. The tree stump lifted upwards and revealed a secret passage heading down into the forest floor. Sally jumped in and slid down a chute made of highly polished plastic being mindful of where her hands were. You could get some nasty friction burns if you weren't careful.

'Sally, how'd it go?' a friendly looking walrus, Rotor, asked Sally.  
'We had a close call with Robotniks Swatbots again but Sonic got us 2 data chips' Sally replied to Rotor as she walked by him to pick up a towel hanging off a tree root. 'We have to be more careful from now on, Robotnik was on to us faster than we thought this time.'  
'Yeah…I'm glad you are Ok, can I…?'  
'Oh yeah, sorry, here you go, could you take a look at these whilst I go for a swim?' Sally handed the data chips to Rotor and headed up a ladder next to the chute opening and climbed up as Rotor headed off with the data chips without a word. She was used to it by now, Rotor was always engrossed when it came to technology.

Knothole was a rather spacious cavern under the forest floor. It used to be walls and floors made of dirt but over time Rotor and his friend Tails had reinforced them with metal scavenged from broken robots that had been brought back for studying. In front of the chute opening was a coat hanger and towel rack. The towel rack was next to the chute so anyone coming back in from the great forest could dry their faces from the humidity outside. Next to the chute was a ladder heading up to the forest floor and coming out by a slow flowing, shallow river. The high mineral deposits in the river gave it an almost tropical appearance.

Rotor stepped through a door into a non-descript room that was full of computer parts then through a door on the other side to his laboratory. Rotor flicked on a switch to his computer and waited as the monitor hummed to life and the computer did a few vital checks before booting up. The checks were the humidity in the air, if the air circulation systems in the room were working and the current room temperature. Everything flashed green and Rotor was clear to proceed.  
He plugged in the data chip and immediately a random assortment of numbers and letters flashed up. 'Nicole, start decrypting this please' he said absentmindedly to the labs artificial intelligence, Nicole.  
'Working on your request now user Rotor' Nicole replied in a strangely sentient voice but only given away by her robotic sense of speech.  
'Oh and Nicole, a further request?' Rotor asked.  
'Yes user Rotor?'  
'Stop calling me 'User Rotor''  
'Yes, Rotor, data decryption failed, encryption not recognised, commencing scan'

Rotor frowned to himself, Robotniks robots in his labs were always altering their encryption techniques but Nicole always cracked them in minutes or at least gave an estimated time until she could decrypt them. 'Getting slow there Nicole'  
Nicole huffed in annoyance at Rotor and her circuits lit up as she tried to crack the encryption again. It was rather strange how Nicole seemed to be a living, breathing organism at times.

'Displaying error user Rotor, device is not a data chip but appears to be a separate computer device' Nicole deliberately called Rotor "User Rotor" to provoke a reaction.  
Rotor raised an eyebrow at Nicole then looked at what he thought was a data chip puzzled now. 'If this is not a data chip, could you tell me exactly what it is and what it is for?' Rotor quizzed Nicole and leaned back in his chair.  
'Say please first' Nicole replied teasingly to Rotor.  
Rotor sighed in annoyance, sometimes he really disliked how Sally had programmed Nicole to correct users manners. It started off as a little joke but Sally left it like that after Rotor became a little more…Mobian friendly. 'Alright alright, you win dear, please tell me the purpose of this device?'

Nicole ignored Rotors flirtatious tone and began scanning the unknown device at light speed. Billions of nanobots crawled through the device and probed at every single circuit board and nano processing chip. 'Displaying results on your screen now user Rotor, I don't suppose you will be taking me out for dinner for making your life easier?'  
Rotor ignored Nicoles oddly flirty reply and use of his pet peeve name and his jaw dropped at the equations and functions flashing up on his screen. 'Um…Nicole…buzz Tails for me please and actually…get Sally as well, tell them this is urgent and cannot wait' Rotor felt a cold sweat develop down his spine and shivered at what he was looking at. He couldn't understand most of it, Tails would know the rest, but from what he could understand, Robotnik had done the impossible. 'That crazy bastard did it…'


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Tails was fast asleep in his favourite cherry wood computer chair. Tails was a kitsune, he had two tails in which his name was derived from. He had come to join the band of Resistance fighters against Robotnik's tyranny and destruction at a tender young age. His origins were not exactly known to the Resistance fighters, he had been found wandering the great forest on his own. The resistance fighters were surprised that such a young creature had survived long at all in the Great Forest alone given the large range of roaming predators.  
At first the Resistance was unsure of what to do with Tail's, he was too young to fight, not particularly gifted athletically and possessed the naivety of a child. However, they soon found young Tails was naturally gifted with technology, mechanics was his area of expertise. He spent a few years taking apart the Resistance's computers and weaponry and actually made a few subtle improvements. After noticing his gift, the Resistance soon appointed Tails as the team's mechanic.

'Tails, Rotor has requested your presence in his laboratory immediately' Nicole's soft but icy cold voice interrupted Tails peaceful sleep.  
"Really, Nicole? I thought I said no waking me this time…" Tails complained to Nicole without opening his eyes.  
A few seconds passed in which Tails almost drifted back off to sleep 'I detected patterns of stress in Rotor's voice Tails, I would highly recommend attending this meeting' Nicole woke Tails up properly this time.  
Tails sat upright in his chair and rubbed the tell-tale traces of sleep from his eyes and blinked in the dimly lit room. 'Nicole, switch the lights back on please' Tails mumbled to Nicole who responded not a moment later by slowly brightening the tube lighting.

'Rotor, I have requested that Tails and Sally join us for a formal meeting. Both seem rather perturbed by this meeting, are you sure this is worth disturbing them for?' Nicole asked Rotor.  
'Yes, this is rather worrying Nicole, I think Robotnik has actually discovered how to manipulate the laws of physics as we know them.' Rotor turned to face Nicole's handheld computer pad as he felt more at ease feeling like he was talking to something tangible rather than thin air.  
Nicole's circuitry flashes furiously as she analysed the unknown devices repeatedly and rechecked her findings. Something in particular caught her attention though and she stopped scanning to take a closer look.  
A string of commands had Nicole's attention, she dedicated half of her available processing ability to check what she had found.  
Odd, these equations she was flashing through were actually adding up. Red warning lights flashed inside Nicole's hardware.

'User Rotor, I must warn you that these calculations are theoretically correct. It appears to be the formula for time dilation.' Nicole warned Rotor in a neutral tone.  
'Nicole only ever calls me "User Rotor" when serious or teasing…' was the first thought to cross Rotor's mind.

The door to Rotor's lab opened cutting him off mid-thought. Sally and Tails walked through followed by Antoine and Sonic.  
'Rotor just what are you up to down here?!' Sonic said the "what" more louder than the rest of the sentence. He looked at the chip set in Nicole's computer and made a grab for it.  
Rotor blocked Sonic's path with his considerable bulk sensing that something was awry.  
'What's going on guys?' Rotor looked to Sally for answers.  
Antoine was the one to provide Rotor with enlightenment however. 'Rotor, whatever you are doing down here you must stop at once!'  
'The electronics are going crazy all over knothole Rotor and we think it might be something to do with the data chips we collected today.' Sally followed on cue.  
'Yeah so we need to get rid of that thing before it causes any major damage' Sonic chipped in making another grab for the chip only to be stopped short again but by Tails this time.  
Tails had pushed past Sonic and was scanning through the equations and formula on Rotor's screen that was scrolling automatically.

Nicole suddenly found her scanning halted abruptly as something inside the chip that seemed to defy physics itself blocked her attempts. 'Rotor, possible imminent danger detected. The hardware in question contains an unknown substance inside that I do not recognise. Recommend immediate evacuation' she cut off the arguing.  
At that moment Nicole picked up a strong energy spike that shot clean out of her detection capabilities. The room immediately flooded with bright light and Rotor in a moment of quick thinking ripped Nicole's mobile computer pad and stuffed it in his satchel just in case the sudden flash lighting the room was destroying the computer.  
Sonic felt ice cold then hot again. Then he felt nothing as his body seemed to rip into a billion tiny pieces all at once. He felt light as air and like he was travelling through space as his particles were zipped off along the space-time continuum.  
Sally tried to open her mouth to scream but couldn't as she no longer had one. Her particles disassembled and fired off as well which was when all thoughts she had or ever had ceased to exist for a few brief moments.  
Tails had not had time to react and Rotor just clutched Nicole in the satchel tight to keep a hold of her.

As fast as the light had come, it also disappeared and Sally found herself face down in…dirt. Not the metallic floor of Rotors lab but dirt. She blinked her eyes against the harsh sunlight that felt somehow brighter now than it was earlier that day and sat up. She felt very disoriented and could see Tails, Antoine, Rotor and Sonic all struggling about in a daze on their feet.

Everything had changed, they were no longer in Rotor's lab now, they were out in the open and a strong wind blew through Sally's long hazel hair. She brushed it away from her face to take in their new surroundings. Flatlands dotted with trees that looked only a few centuries old. Sally felt herself spinning again. She wasn't going to faint. She could not. Not now. She did.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Sally awoke to a harsh light penetrating her eyelids. She blinked against the orange stars now flooding her vision as her eyes struggled to adjust to the sunlight which somehow now seemed much brighter than what she had seen earlier that day. She looked about her to see what the others were doing. Sonic was nowhere to be seen, neither was Tails. Rotor was setting Nicole up and Antoine was standing around doing seemingly nothing.  
'Hey guys…what just happened?' Sally asked Rotor and Antoine.  
Rotor looked up from Nicole's open circuitry 'You've been unconscious for about 2 hours Sal'; I'm just setting Nicole up to work. She seems to have crashed.' He clipped the cover back over Nicole's circuitry 'I'm glad Nicole is shielded from high energy bursts, but she still got a little scrambled, with any luck this should fix things' he clicked the switch on the side of Nicole and her screen hummed to life.

'Checking vitals' Nicole's voice sounding eerily robotic now mentioned to no-one in particular.  
'Warning, Rotor, heavy damage sustained to primary power source, switching to nuclear battery and solar storage'

'Nicole, where are we?' Sally walked over to Nicole and retrieved her from Rotor.  
'We are in Knothole, year 245' Nicole answered Sally, her regular voice taking over now as she finished setting up.  
Sally blinked in surprise 'Rotor are you sure Nicole is working alright? Nicole, run diagnostics'  
'She is working fine Sal' I triple checked her'

Sally sat down, she needed a minute to steady herself, was she really in the past? The year was 3228 when they had seemingly teleported from the face of Mobius. That could only leave one possibility open, that they had done the impossible and travelled through time.

-

About fifty miles away Sonic was exploring the region. He had come to a very densely packed jungle. He looked up at the tall trees standing imposingly above him. Standing at approximately several hundred feet tall, he had never seen these trees before. Sonic had to stop still and appreciate the many beautiful colours and species of flora that lined the outside of the jungle. At the back of his head the voice of his late uncle Chuck was saying that incredible beauty is an excellent cover for extreme danger.  
Sonic had set out south whilst Tails had flown north to scout the area. Sonic thought to himself for a minute whether he should take a short expedition into the jungle and see if he could find anything that would give them a clue where they were…or what time period they were in. He still was not sure if Nicole had been malfunctioning when she said they were in the year 245 but still…he could not deny that what she said would match up with their current predicament.

'Well, I'm here now, so I may as well take a look whilst we're still here, no tellin' when we'll go back. 'Sides we need some food and water' he took a leisurely running pace into the jungle. Time once again felt as if it were slowing down and everything instead of becoming a blur seemed to pass by with incredible sloth-like speed. A flood of cool liquid filled his head again whilst he darted between trees and hopped from branch to branch avoiding dense undergrowth on the jungle floor.

Sonic passed by several strange looking creatures. They looked particularly menacing but did not even see him as he passed them. Sweat beaded his forehead though as the humidity hit him like a monsoon and he soon found himself feeling quite thirsty.  
About this time Sonic could smell something cooking and slowed to a stop leaving a trail of burning dead leaves in the undergrowth. He did not worry about starting a fire here, the flames soon died down from the humidity.  
'I smell something cooking, which must mean there is intelligent life here after all…' he thought to himself and started walking in the direction the smell was emanating from.  
Being a jungle it was difficult to locate precisely where a smell was coming from but he soon found the way. The thought crossed his mind suddenly that he did not know the way back now. He really should have thought about how he was going to get back before he ventured into the jungle. Now he was likely going to have to just keep running back in the general direction he came from and hope that he finds the way out soon. With a normal Mobian this might have been a problem but for Sonic, his super-sonic speed would make it a minor inconvenience as he could navigate through long distances in the jungle in relatively short periods of time.  
He brushed some vines out of the way and stepped under some dead tree branches to be confronted by an odd sight. A clearing in the jungle with a large pyramid shaped structure in the middle that rose above the tree tops in a peak. There were from what he could see Echidnas walking around the structure. The Echidnas seemed to be rushing about talking loudly among themselves and appeared to be having some sort of celebratory party.  
He stopped dead, dumbfounded at the scene playing out in front of him. The Echidnas were an endangered race back in the great forest. The only Echidna he had ever met was his friend/occasional nemesis Knuckles. Yet there were many of them right here all wearing traditional tribal clothing. The males wore nothing at all bar some jewellery made from hollowed out nuts and shiny stones. Some had their faces painted white whilst the girls wore dresses made from silk and decorated with bright feathers.  
One of the Echidnas, a young girl stopped and looked at Sonic. Their eyes made contact and the rest of the Echidnas soon stopped and stared at the unusual blue intruder. The talking hushed down to a whisper among the Echidnas and Sonic found himself feeling very self-conscious as from his experience with Knuckles, Echidnas were a very violent species with a history of war.

The young girl slowly approached Sonic. Sonic could not help but notice how stunningly beautiful this girl was, her fur was more of a pinkish hue than red and had some brightly coloured bands of unknown material tied around her spines. Two rather large looking Echidnas marched behind the girl. By the way they kept a respectable distance Sonic figured that this girl must be an important Mobian here.  
'Hello stranger, what brings you to our camp?' The girl asked Sonic in Mobian. Granted the accent was a little odd sounding, she still made perfect sense to Sonic.  
'I…I don't know how to explain…well…you see…um…this is going to sound crazy but' Sonic struggled to find the words 'me and some friends have gotten lost and we don't know where we are, we are trying to get back home' Sonic realized how strange he must sound now to these people.

The girl stared at him curiously for a minute before responding 'You do not sound like you are from here, where do you come from?'  
'Well…we come from…the future' Sonic mentally checked himself as the two large Echidnas with the girl scoffed at what he said.  
'You come from the future? Well, I don't think you are a threat to us. You are welcome to stay with us as long as you need until you feel better.' She responded to Sonic thinking he must have hit his head 'You will have to speak to my father though, but for now, call me Tikal. These are my fathers people and you are now a guest of the Echidna tribe'

Phew, this was a fun chapter to write. I am off to bed in just a moment as it is almost 11pm here in England.  
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter and I hope to be writing chapter 5 very soon. Please leave me some reviews or critical feedback so I can improve if need be/it will be encouraging for me.


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